Scars
by stefanie bean
Summary: Everyone has scars, and Hurley and Claire share the stories of theirs. Love, sensuality, and self-acceptance, set after "The End."


**Scars**

**(A/N: **_Many thanks to_** inlaterdays **_for beta-ing_**.)**

Claire and Hugo lie together on a bed in a motel room which smells of cleaning fluid, where the windows rattle every time a jet takes off from the LAX runway.

It's late in the afternoon, and he's visiting Los Angeles from the Island. He has only three short days. That's a hard-and-fast rule, and he hasn't broken it yet. Because of Aaron, she doesn't want to sleep with him at the big Topanga Canyon house which she shares with Kate, Aaron, and her mother. So although Hugo and Claire hang out, watch TV, play with Aaron, swim in the pool, as well as visit Hugo's parents, once in awhile they manage to slip away to this obscure airport motel.

Now, nestled together like spoons, they drift in and out of the drowsy afterglow which follows love-making. She snuggles closer to him. He's huge, like a fortress, and she's on the inside, protected. Safe.

He lightly caresses her left arm, where he finds this rough, corrugated spot, and soothes it with circling motions. It looks like a burn, a bad one.

She shifts a little, embarrassed that he's found the scar. Then she rolls over to face him, trading belly warmth on her back for the front. As she nuzzles his breasts, she says in a muffled voice, "You've never asked me about it before."

"I figured you'd tell me sometime."

"I guess you could just make it go away if you wanted to, right?"

He could. He has that power now, should he decide to use it. But somehow, he doesn't. For one thing, it seems like cheating. For another, he wants her to trust him enough to reveal what happened.

She scoots up from his chest to look him full in the face. "I've got an idea. Each of us picks one of the other's scars, and they have to tell about it. We'll take turns. It can be a game."

He's seen her naked from just about every angle, in every light, and while he's traveled most of her scars with fingers or tongue, he doesn't always know their stories. He says, "I dunno, that doesn't seem fair. I don't think I have that many."

Implying that she does, which is true. But she just says with a faint little smile, "Are you sure?"

Now he's flustered. "So, um, who goes first?"

They do rock, paper, scissors, and she wins. On his face she traces the small, pitted marks which line his cheeks. When he comes to her from the Island he sports a full beard, but then razors off everything except the thick mutton-chops which cover his marred cheeks. Even so, a few marks sneak past the borders of his facial hair, and these she touches.

"I had bad zits in middle school," he says, hesitant.

"No shame, no blame," she replies. "That's what Dr. Curtis always says."

He's glad to change the subject, because this game is harder than he thought. "How're you liking him?"

"He's kind. Last time he asked about you, too. And the best part is, I don't have to lie to him." For Claire's psychiatrist knows about the Island. "So you had zits," she says, then kisses his plump cheeks.

He likes that she doesn't say anything like, "Oh, they're not so bad," or "Some people have it so much worse." Her lips feel cool as they graze his face, coupled with the light sweetness of her breath, and the fading sunlight slides in between the blinds to back-light her hair with a golden halo. Her lips across his face seem to bless it.

He doesn't even have to tell her that he wants to hear about the burn scar. So she says in a halting voice, "It was the first time _he_ sent me to the Temple. You know who." Hugo's expression shows that he knows very well who Claire is talking about. "It was to deliver some stupid message, I don't even remember what. But instead of letting me go, the people there grabbed me. And then-"

She's talked to Dr. Curtis about it, a lot, but the memory still hurts. "They shocked me with these clip things, hooked up to a battery. They called it a test, and said that I failed." She points to her arm. Telling him doesn't take away the memory of the hot iron which seared her flesh, or how she had to cauterize the infection herself, using fire to heal fire. "They did it to Sayid, too."

"I know," he answers. Then he draws her back close to him, pulling her up against the whole long, sloping front of his nakedness.

Warmth flows over her like a bath. She knows now that he doesn't mean to do it, that he can no more restrain this flow of good feeling than the Nile can stop its flood. A warm glow encircles her, spreading over her skin, her muscles, seeping down through her spine.

Out at the front desk, the haggard clerk smiles, and can't say why. The maid cleaning the room directly below them starts to hum an old song from her Zapotec village, and all of a sudden her feet don't hurt anymore.

He leans over her and kisses the scar on her upper arm, as if saluting a vanquished enemy still worthy of respect.

Claire says again, "Don't make it go away." But of course he won't.

Now it's her turn. She runs her hand down the curve of his leg until she comes to the small pit nestled in the heel of his right foot. She knows how it happened, but wants to hear him tell it himself.

"Sea urchin got me," he says. Then his face falls. "You got kidnapped by Ethan, and I had to use a stick for a few days to get around. So I didn't go looking for you right when I should've. Then, when Locke and Charlie couldn't find you..." His voice trails off, and for an instant it's like old times, with him feeling helpless, useless.

"It's OK," she says. "I was locked up very tightly. Nobody could find me." She brings her face down right to where the sea urchin poison has eaten away the flesh of his heel. Then she rests by his feet, stroking them lightly as he lies stretched out big as a mountain before her.

As he rubs her right leg, he finds the bullet wound on her upper thigh, where the skin pulls tight to one side, then puckers loosely on the other. "This looks like it hurts," he says, because it seems as if it should.

"It's mostly numb," she says in a stiff voice.

"Is this, uh, too much?" he asks, not wanting to press. "Cause if it is, you know, we don't-"

"One of the Temple people shot me. I tried to stitch it. Kind of bollocksed it up, I'd say."

"Oh, Claire," he breathes out, sounding so sad as he rests his hand on the old thigh-wound.

She doesn't answer, but instead scoots up to the top of his thigh. He trembles, but it can't be for shyness, because she's lain there more than once, softly cushioned in the same way. This time it's different, though, because now neither of them are drunk on each other's flesh. Instead, they're both cool and wide-awake, tender with each other, and naked to each other in a way they've never been before.

Now she touches him intimately, running her finger around the scar of his circumcision. A thrill goes through him and he starts to thicken again, even though they've already made love this afternoon. He leans back, eyes closed, reveling in her touch, but it's almost too much, and if she does that any more, this game is over for good. So he takes her hand in his, stopping the delightful motion.

In a voice full of sympathy she asks, "Did it hurt?"

"What? Um, I dunno. I was a just a baby. It was in the hospital, when I was born."

"Aaron isn't."

"Nope," he says. "I guess Jack never wanted to bother."

"I never asked him to."

With a tease in his voice he says, "Maybe you should kiss it, to, you know, make it better."

She laughs and gives him a light, quick brush with her lips, because the afternoon is fading, and she knows how love with him can last for a very long time, slow and deliberate, until pleasure turns her inside-out like a glove. But she doesn't want to stir that up right now, since both Aaron and the passage of time are starting to weigh on her.

So she pulls herself up to a cross-legged position on the bed, springy and saggy as only cheap motel beds are. It's his turn and he seems to be at a loss what to pick next, as his fingers drift like migratory birds over her skin alternately pale and reddened from the LA sun.

"I never used to get a sunburn on the Island. Weird, huh?" she remarks.

He doesn't answer, just explores the thin parallel tracks of silvery-white lines which run down her stomach. Further down, where her boy-cut bathing suit has covered her lower belly and upper thighs, the marks fade into invisibility. He touches her stretch-marks and she smiles as she says, "That's too easy. You know where those came from."

Then something bold occurs to her. She lays her hand across his broad belly and his breath stops for a few seconds. "Is this OK?" she asks. He nods, but with eyes dark and brows furrowed, so she feels compelled to ask again. "You sure?"

Again he nods, and all at once what started out as a game takes on a whole new, serious cast.

She runs her fingers lightly around his lower belly where the flesh is the softest, tracing the thin stretched ridges of skin which have faded to light pink. Each ridge is like a tiny stream-bed dry from the passing of years, and the stretch marks extend up the curve of his belly and sides.

"Hurley," she says, wanting to give him a way out, because he looks so genuinely unhappy now.

Instead of saying anything, he draws in a deep, calming breath, as if this is the hardest thing he's ever had to do. "I wasn't a fat kid. But when I got to be twelve, thirteen, I dunno, a lot of things started happening. My dad, well, by then we knew he wasn't coming back. And Diego, that's my brother, Diego started getting into trouble. Then my Grandma Titi died. Mom started working nights, weekends. And I um, kinda discovered cheeseburgers."

She strokes his belly with both hands, taking in the lines, the fat, the cellulite.

"It just sort of got ahold of me," he concludes. What he doesn't tell her is that by sixteen he'd become this stumbling, ungainly giant who didn't fit into the school desks anymore. And yet he still stayed light on his feet on the basketball court, which was no consolation at all, because he was too ashamed to wear his school team's silky, clinging jersey.

He passes his hand all down the voluptuous length of his body, anguish in his eyes and voice. "My whole body, it's just one big scar."

She sits perfectly still, the inward and outward draw of her breath ticking off the seconds, then finally says, "You offered to take mine away. But what about yours?"

For it wasn't so long ago that she had sat on that scrubby Hydra Island beach, no longer caring. She would have sunk right along with that island, all because she "didn't want Aaron to see her like this." So she understands this wanting to cut off a huge chunk of yourself, thinking that this time, maybe just this time, you can become a different person. One who fits in. One who's acceptable.

He doesn't answer at first, just lies there half-raised up on his elbows, skin golden in the fading light. She's come to know that pensive, close-mouthed expression he gets when he's taking something into his heart very seriously.

He's considered it, she can tell.

Finally he says, "Nah. It wouldn't be, like, me."

"No, it wouldn't."

"Dr. Brooks said I over-ate to punish myself-"

"You mean a kind of self-harm?"

"No, Dr. Curtis said that with me it was probably a way to make myself feel better."

"Self-medicating, in other words."

"Right. You know, the way some people use booze or drugs. But then Dr. Curtis said that not all-"

"Not all coping methods are automatically bad," she says, joining her voice with his. "He's told me that, too."

Hugo's still not sure of one thing, though. Pointing to his body, he says, "But I guess all this can't be so great for you, though."

Astonished, she laughs. She can't help it. Because he's wrong, so wrong. She says, "I love your body. And not in some phony 'Oh, I see your true inner beauty' way."

Hugo believes her, through and through. Oh, she loves his body, all right, because why else would they be here in this room? Back at her house they try so hard to keep their hands off each other when they sit across the breakfast table, or plop down on the big, over-stuffed couch in front of the TV, their thighs pressed together, smoldering.

That's why as soon as the motel room door's locked and the long vertical blinds are drawn, she throws her clothes to the floor and climbs into bed, arms open in invitation. Just a few hours earlier, she was leaning her head back, stretching out her long white neck like a swan's as he moved in her flesh, slow and deliberate. She cried out, gripping his hips to pull him further in. And while he didn't think two people could get any more naked than that, he's willing to admit that he was wrong.

"One more round," Claire says as she gently runs her finger around the deep font of his navel. "We all start out with the same one. Standard issue." Then, before he can do the same to her, she buries her face in the mountain of his belly and fills his navel with her tongue, rolling it around in circles of delight. When she surfaces, her face covered with a wide grin, never has he loved her more than at this instant.

"I love your body, Hurley," she repeats. "And I love you. All of you."

"I love you, too," he answers. They've never said it before, and he wonders why not, because it rolls off the tongue so effortlessly, so easily.

Evening swiftly approaches. Aaron will be waiting for Mummy Claire to come home and make supper for him. Hugo's time is short, too, so every moment of this seventy-two hour visit has to count. Tonight he'll whip up his special hand-tossed pizza at the Topanga Canyon house, where his parents will join them for dinner. As usual, his mother will complain about the tortuous, twisting drive up the canyon road, then fuss over Aaron as she darts side glances at Hugo, her oblique looks suggesting what she refuses to ask.

_Soon, Ma_, he thinks. _Soon._

He says, "I guess scars kind of hold everything together, don't they?"

As she dresses, she nods and flashes a smile like a sunbeam at him.

Hugo's body is a scar, yes, but like Claire's, scars are made of strong stuff. He's not going to wish his scars away, or hers.

(_the end_)


End file.
